Gov’t green lights Hungarian medical school in Targu Mures

Opposition says it will initiate a no-confidence vote to demonstrate that PM Ungureanu cannot resist UDMR and other ruling parties’ ‘blackmail’.

After 10 days when it has been under public debate, the draft decision setting up study lines in Hungarian at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Targu Mures (UMF) was adopted by the Ungureanu Cabinet yesterday. After the cabinet meeting, Education Minister Catalin Baba said that the new act was not ‘inventing’ any new study programme and that the government was just enforcing the Education Law, otherwise facing accusations of ‘abuse of office’. ‘At the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca there is even a faculty in the Hungarian language. Actually, what happened in Targu Mures was the inability of our Romanian and Hungarian colleagues of compromising on the university Charter, election of the rector and members of the Senate,’ Mediafax quotes Minister Baba as having explained. The minister says the new structure will start to operate this autumn, after the completion of administrative procedures. ‘The process will last two-three months, but the faculty will practically begin to exist when the government decision is published in the Official Journal of Romania. Study curricula and not faculties require accreditation. Where ARCIS (National Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) finds that quality standards are not fulfilled, the Education Law and the Law on the Assurance of Quality in Higher Education are applied and any programme that fails to reach the standards is liquidated,’ said the minister. He added that the Government had also discussed the option of setting up a German line also in Targu Mures, but that it was a longer-term project. The minister of education also said additional funds would be allocated for the operation of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, as funding is based on the number of students. He pointed out that, during the public debate on the normative act, there had been opinions the government took into account and that its decision in no way sought segregation on ethnic grounds. According to the draft act of the executive, the university will have teaching lines in the Hungarian language for the specialities Medicine, Pharmacy and General Nursing for 325 students and in English for Medicine, schooling a total of 50 students.

PSD threatens

PSD leader Victor Ponta yesterday reiterated USL’s intention to introduce a no-confidence vote against the cabinet over the adoption of the government decision establishing a Hungarian education line yesterday. ‘It’s not going to be a big deal, starting from this ethnic segregation, I think what we should stress is that this is bargaining and blackmail governance and the prime-minister turns out to be a man who cannot resists blackmail. With a weak man leading the country, who knows what PDL, UNPR and UDMR will demand next,’ Ponta said at the meeting of the National Standing Bureau of PSD. He added that, although he had initially hailed the courage of PM Ungureanu of resisting UDMR’s ‘blackmail’ about UMF Targu Mures, or PDL and UNPR’s regarding the allocation of funds for their mayors in the country, in fact, the head of the government has proved that all he does ’s surrender ‘unconditionally’. Ponta also pointed out that USL would make a very careful decision on the timing for introducing and debating on a no-confidence vote, which will be ‘in the coming period’, but not during the Holly Week. Mures PSD organisation yesterday demanded the resignation of PDL Vice-President Dorin Florea as Mayor of Targu Mures for ‘the political and administrative failure on the matter of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy’ in the city. Dorin Florea replied that the plan was not to set up two separate faculties and that he had no reason to resign.

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